Students falling asleep in class can be rather common in my profession. I would like to believe I am by no means a boring lecturer. But hey, even my dad jokes do fall flat on deaf ears, or should I say, non-dad ears? hahahaha... No? Not funny? Fine.
But, imagine my surprise when a student recently fell asleep IN MY ONLINE CLASS! Now, that has to be a first for me.
How It All Happened...
I was conducting a class via Google meet and sensing that the students were growing a bit passive, I decided to call each student up to ascertain if they were listening. It was all going well until I reached one of the students. We shall call him Adi.
So Adi was initially unresponsive. I thought, perhaps he was just taking a leak. So I went on asking his friends to respond. I circled back to Adi a few more times and once again, no response. His friends did not know where he went as well. That, or they did not want to sell him out.
Later after class was over, he texted me indicating that he had fallen asleep during my class. Well, at least he was honest. I gave him some advice on managing his sleep before making promise that he won't do it again.
Maybe Some are Not Ready for the Freedom of Online Learning.
As much as I would love to believe that my students who are college level kids are ready for all the freedom that online learning gives, it seems that they may need a lot more supervision that face to face classes provide.
I don't blame them really since they were taught to and trained to operate in a very spoonfed manner from high school. Perhaps one day they may change. Perhaps with enough training and life experience, the students may start to be better independent learners.
As for me, I will be implementing more hands on activities to prevent this from happening again.
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Hello @alvinauh
I must confess that I thought it was funny that your student fell asleep, but, understandably, the reality is that if a student falls asleep even in a classroom with the teacher in front of him, in online classes it would be much easier.
I can only imagine how sad your student must have felt.
Have a good weekend.
I think he was more relieved that I did not take any disciplinary action against him hahaha. But yes, face to face classes were so much easier
Greetings, your contribution is great and you have all the knowledge. Not all students are familiar with this type of distance learning, as he says, it is good to innovate learning strategies that stimulate more students.
It is and it can be, there is much trial and error going on at the moment on how to make things more creative, we are however limited much by the platform that we are using
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thank you so much
I am sure it is not just the classroom but any online meeting. It is much harder keeping people engaged online and I am always trying to invent new tricks to enhance collaboration and participation. Probably the worst session to be in is when the speaker is purely didactic.
It is true, makes you wonder how else can we make it more interesting? VR perhaps?
I suppose the key is interactivity and participation. I have a few tools I use - I will try to create a post about them.
Not all students are the same, there are some that being at home, they find it difficult to concentrate for class since they are in the place where they usually relax.
I once had a student who when I went to his house to teach him he could not concentrate, he wanted to go to the bathroom every so often, look for something in his room, drink water or show me something interesting about his home, it was difficult for him to understand that it was a moment for study.
I told her mother that it was best to teach him in the classroom even though the mother wanted the class to be at her home. In the classroom he was not distracted as at home. He was the only one with that concentration problem, with my other students that I taught at home, they concentrated easily.
When the pandemic started, we knew that this child could not hold virtual classes, he would lie in bed to watch the class. Something that I do not recommend since the brain will tell him that it is time to sleep!
Virtual classes are not for everyone, virtual classes are for independent and self-taught students, students who find it easy to concentrate and do not need a parent to watch them.
When I started giving online lessons, I was very sleepy, can you imagine falling asleep being the teacher? ha ha ha
I learned that I had to take a good bath, dress like I was going to go out no matters the students wouldn't see me because I wasn't going to share the screen. Doing a whole ritual before class like putting on makeup, told my brain that it was time to work and not to relax.
The other thing is that ... In online classes with a single student it has an advantage but with classes with very large groups, it is difficult to keep them all active, if the group is small one can invent a dynamic where everyone participates continuously, but in a large group becomes difficult. When the student has a very passive role, he gets bored.
There are pages on the internet that serve as support. For example, everyone solves quizzes at the same time or plays, but not all classes can be this way, at some point the student will have to assume a passive role if he is in a large group.